Ralph Compton - Bullet for a Bad Man

‘‘Who would want to live in the barrens?’’ Dan asked in some amazment.

‘‘I did not say live. I said rent ,’’ Epp corrected him. ‘‘Anyone driving cattle north would be glad to have a place to rest for a day or two. We could let word get out. Say that for a fee, a dollar a head, they can use our grass and water and then move on.’’

‘‘I never heard of such a thing.’’

‘‘I have. Down to Texas and elsewhere it is common.’’

‘‘If this is what you want,’’ Dan said uncertainly.

‘‘I would not bring it up if it wasn’t. In fact, I have already talked to a man about it and he will be bringing in a small herd next week. His name is Hanks.’’

‘‘Do you want me to ride over with a few of the hands and see that—Hanks, you say?—keeps his cattle where he should? We don’t want them drifting out of the barrens and mixing with the Circle V cows.’’

‘‘That won’t be necessary. He is aware of the problem that would cause.’’ Epp watched the buster dab his rope on the bronc. ‘‘I want you to have a talk with the men. Explain to them that until I say otherwise, under no circumstances are they to go anywhere near the barrens. I would not like it if someone came poking around our herd and I am sure whoever rents range from us will not want our hands poking around theirs.’’

‘‘I will spread the word.’’

‘‘It is settled, then.’’ Epp turned toward the house but stopped when the foreman cleared his throat. ‘‘You have something on your mind?’’

‘‘This Hanks you mentioned. It wouldn’t be Blin Hanks, would it? I have heard of him. I even saw him once. By all accounts he is unsavory.’’

‘‘No, the man I talked to is Edgar Hanks. I ran into him when I was in Tucson. He is a small rancher trying to grow bigger.’’

‘‘I’ve never heard of him.’’

‘‘I would imagine there are a lot of ranchers we haven’t met or heard of,’’ Epp said.

‘‘How many head will he be bringing through?’’

‘‘I don’t rightly know yet. Somewhere between two and three hundred.’’ Epp smiled. ‘‘Don’t forget to tell the punchers. Never let it be said the men at the Circle V don’t have manners.’’

Dan Morgan stood still for a full minute after Epp had walked off. ‘‘Manners, hell,’’ he finally said. ‘‘He must think I was born yesterday.’’

‘‘Who?’’ the bronc buster asked.

Dan had not seen him standing by the rails. ‘‘No one. I was talking to myself. Old ranahans like me do that a lot.’’

‘‘The hell you say,’’ the buster responded. ‘‘You are no more feeble than me, and I am half your age.’’

‘‘You are a braggart, is what you are.’’ Dan walked off smiling, but the smile faded. He went into the stable and down the aisle to the tack room, and once he was alone he placed both hands flat on the wall and bowed his head and shook as if with the ague. ‘‘Damn him anyway,’’ he said bitterly. He closed his eyes and the lines in his face deepened. ‘‘What do I do about it? That is the question. And I will be a maid in waiting if I know the answer.’’

It was ten minutes before Dan came out of the tack room. He had composed himself and he went on about his duties without anyone suspecting the turmoil he was in. That night, in the shack he had all to himself, he sat with his head in his hands for more than two hours. Finally he stood and said, ‘‘All I have done is give myself a headache.’’

But Dan also remembered: an incident here, a word there, an oddity or two that had pricked him but not enough to create suspicion. Now, though, after stringing the incidents and the words and the oddities together, he saw everything differently.

The horror of it all shook him.

Dan Morgan thought of Ned and Lillian Scott, and young Boone, and he did something he had not done in more years than he would admit to; he wept. He cried softly and silently until he did not have a tear left to shed, and then he shook himself as would a bear coming out of hibernation.

‘‘I will be damned if I will fall for it,’’ he told the four walls.

Day followed hot day and night followed warm night, and Dan kept a horse saddled behind his shack after the sun went down, and did not tell anyone. He sat by his window with the lamp off and watched the ranch house until his eyelids were too heavy for him to keep his eyes open.

His patience was rewarded when a rider approached the ranch house along about ten, and rode around to the rear.

Dan was ready. He grabbed his Winchester and hurried out. The cribber he had chosen was gnawing on his shack, but it stopped when he shoved his Winchester into the saddle scabbard. Stepping into the stirrups, he reined to the south. He swung wide of the outhouses and was waiting off in the dark when Epp Scott and another man came out. They shook hands and for a few moments were bathed in light spilling from the open doorway.

‘‘I knew it,’’ Dan Morgan said to himself, with all the bitterness of a man who had been lied to by someone he would have died for if called to.

The night rider climbed on his roan and departed.

Dan let him get a good lead but not so good that he would lose him. A crescent moon made the following easier. Thankfully the rider did not stop but made a beeline for the barrens.

Hours went by. Dan would not be able to make it back to the ranch by dawn, but that was all right. He had told a puncher by the name of Frank Lloyd, a ranny Dan trusted, that if he was not there in the morning to rouse the men and set them to work; then Lloyd was to do it. And if Epp Scott happened by and wanted to know where Dan was, Lloyd was to tell him he had gone into Tucson to pick up supplies.

Dan was surprised he was not nervous. If he was right—and by the looks of the man who had paid Epp Scott a visit, he was—then he was riding into a viper’s nest. But he needed to prove his suspicions were justified and he refused to endanger anyone else in the proving.

By the middle of the night they were well west and south of Red Butte. They passed bunches of cattle that had bedded down.

The barrens were the horror Dan remembered, the thornbrush impenetrable unless a man knew exactly where to find the few trails that led in and out.

Dan had been in the barrens often enough after strays that he was more acquainted with the maze than most. He knew where Epp’s visitor was headed, and rather than keep following and risk being spotted, he reined wide and rode in a loop that brought him up on the basin, as it was called, from the west. Ten acres of grass in an oval hollow. Plenty for a small herd, and a campfire could be hid from prying eyes.

Dan drew rein fifty yards out. He remembered to take his spurs off and shove them in his saddlebags so the jingling did not give him away. He smiled as he stalked forward. He had not done anything like this since he was a youth. The young were always headstrong and thought they were invincible.

The last sixty feet, Dan crawled on his belly, the Winchester in front of him. He expected sentries and he was not disappointed. One at each end of the basin, the man near him constantly yawning and shaking his arms to stay awake. Another man was by the fire and three or four were under blankets.

It was the cows that interested Dan, the cows he had come so far to inspect. Two hundred head, more or less. Many were longhorns, but a lot were not. A few open-faced cattle were mixed in, and that told Dan, as surely as anything, that his hunch had been right.

Still, Dan waited, and when the nearest sentry drifted in the other direction, he slipped into the basin.

The cows had been driven so long and so hard that they were too exhausted to do more than look at him with dull regard. Dan crouched and quietly moved among them, patting necks and rumps and speaking softly. A torch would help to read the brands, but he did not need his eyes when he had his fingers and could trace the brands by touch. It helped that most of the brands were on the left hip. Those that were elsewhere were added evidence that the cows came from more than one ranch.